


Man With A Van

by Roadstergal



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Dominance, Gangsters, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:31:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark Fest prompt: <i>Martin really would do almost anything for money</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Man With A Van

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Kahvi for the beta.

It was a fairly cheap mobile, and more than a little out of date. It was Martin's sister's, and when she mentioned she was going to donate it to charity, Martin wasn't quite proud enough not to offer himself up as a very deserving local charity.

Between the free telephone and pay-by-the-minute plans, Martin kept his communication going. He typically only needed minutes when he had a job, and the job typically paid for the minutes with a little on top for rent and bakery-clearance bread.

His sister hadn't been terribly kind to it, and it was stuck on the default ring she had given it for non-contact-list numbers; the first scintillating notes of Madonna's Lucky Star. It probably went farther than that, out to the first squeaky-voiced line of the song, but Martin never let it get that far before diving on it, eager for a job. That cheesy '80s arpeggio meant money to him, now, and he would roll out of the scavenged futon that passed as a bed and press Talk, eagerly, at any time of day, even in the small hours of the morning. Such as now.

"Icarus Removals, may I help you?" Martin's voice sounded like he had been chewing on sawdust. Well, last night's dinner wasn't far off.

"We have a job for you." the voice on the other end replied, curtly. It was deep and Northern, and sounded like it belonged to a very large man indeed. "Three hundred quid. Move one parcel. No questions asked. Can you do it?"

"Oh, yes, of course, no, no questions asked. I never ask them. Of any of my clients. Except, of course, where I'm supposed to go with the van, which is a bit of a necessary question to do the job, of course, and I wouldn't quite expect it to fall under the 'no questions asked' umbrella..."

"Wolvo." The voice rattled off an address. "Be there in half an hour." The party on the other end of the line disconnected the call.

Martin grabbed for his trousers, desperately hoping the van would _start_. Three hundred pounds!

* * *

The address was not in the nicest part of town. This was a depressing constant in Martin's life. His own attic room wasn't in the nicest part of town, the crap hotels Carolyn put them up in weren't in the nicest part of town, the clients who were looking for a van that cheaply weren't in the nicest part of town. Surely, Martin pondered, there were parts of some towns that weren't the nicest, but still resisded in some happy medium where they weren't home to drunks, thugs, piles of rubbish, and giant Norwegian rats?

Or run-down graffiti-covered buildings, such as the one he ended up in front of. His beaten-down van looked sadly at home in front of it, Martin noted, as he stepped out onto the pavement.

"Oi," the deep voice from the phone call said, and Martin jerked his around, trying to place its direction of origin.

"Nervous one, isn't he?" the voice continued, and a man, about five feet high and as wide in the shoulders as he was tall, stepped out of the dark doorway of the building. 

Those massive, pale yellow shoulders were covered with cheap tattoos, fuzzed by time, that made their blurry way down his muscled arms. His nose was twisted and lumpy, as if it had been frequently broken, and his hair had apparently given up on the whole situation and left. He walked closer, and Martin had the unusual sensation of somebody looking _up_ at him. The man stared at him levelly, as if daring a certain word beginning with an 's' to cross Martin's mind.

"That your van?" he boomed.

"Yes," Martin replied. The more he warned himself not to say that certain word, the more it swam around in his head, dragging synonyms along for the ride like a thesaurus with a death wish. _Short. Diminutive. Dwarfen. Munchkin. Wee._ Martin had a rather good database of these terms, as they were more regularly applied to him.

"Ugly."

"It's not quite as pretty as some, but it runs." Like that man had any reason to condemn anything else in the known universe on aesthetic grounds. _Squat. Tiny. Shrimp._

The man shrugged, walking to the back. He flung open the doors and looked into the cargo area. "It'll do. Boys!" he yelled.

Three men shuffled out of the doorway. They could have been any race, bundled up as they were in thick coats with turned-up collars, pulled-low hats, jeans with workboots, and leather work gloves. They carried, between themselves, a long, narrow package, wrapped in cloth. "In here." The men threw the package into the van; it landed with a loud, heavy thud, and the van's suspension creaked in protest.

"Where to?" Martin asked. He started to move along to take a look at the package. The (minuscule) man slammed the doors shut, pulling out a wad of bills. That sight brought Martin to a standstill. _Three months' use fee for that storage room in the attic he called home, and food - decent food at that..._

"Take the package here." The man thrust a piece of paper at Martin. "There's a skip in front of the house. Put it there."

"But why..." The man thrust the bills into Martin's hand, and his brain told him _oh, stop it_. "Thank you, mister...?"

"Never you mind. Get a move on."

Martin hopped into the cab, stashing the money in his secret place as he fastened his safety belt. As he started the van and drove off, he looked in his side-view mirror; his tail-lights glittered red off of the eyes of the well-covered men behind him.

* * *

Martin had to stop for petrol on the way. He filled the tank up, fully, only having to peel one bill off from the wad in his secret stash to do so - and he got change back, to boot. He couldn't remember the last time he had a full tank of fuel. And a Lucozade, some disgusting sugary orange flavor that might as well be nectar of the gods, as far as he was concerned. It had been rather a bad month for eating.

He sang to himself as he turned onto the M6 and headed for Birmingham, and as there was no Douglas in the van to snark at him, he sang loudly and lustily. The miles flew by, despite his low, fuel-conserving speed, and he soon exited the freeway and made his stumbling way, aided only by some highly out-of-date maps, to an area of Birmingham that was every bit as much not-the-nicest as whence he had come with this package. The streets were ill-lit and deserted, vast gulfs separating one dingy puddle of sodium light from another. Nonetheless, the massive, decrepit skip out in the road was easy to locate.

Martin pulled up in front of it, and spent a good minute begging the transmission to move through Neutral and Reverse and click, unhappily, into Park. It needed a good servicing, but it was just going to have to learn to do without. Like the hinges on the rear door, which squeaked in protest as Martin pulled them open.

The package was ungainly and heavy. At least twelve stone if it was a pound, and stiff and bulky to boot. Martin tugged and hauled and swore gently, teasing the thing down to the back of the van. That made it easier to slide down and put it on his shoulder, which in turn - did very little to make it easier to get it over the high sides of the skip, come to that. He pushed and clambered and tried all kinds of very clever angles, but nothing would do but to groan and sweat and muscle the thing over. For a man with as little muscle as Martin, it was nearly a Sisyphean task, and when he finally got the thing to sit on the balance point on the edge, and then fall in instead of back onto his head, he collapsed against the metal side of the skip, giving himself a small, internal cheer.

"What the fuck is this, then?" a sneering voice said. Martin looked up, which took entirely too much effort. A dark-skinned woman, easily half again as tall as Martin and not slender, stood in front of him, looking down at him with her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Just... taking... a breath," he panted, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

"A breath? A fucking _breath_? What'd you put in there, then?"

It occurred to Martin that he should be a bit worried about the fact that he had just taken a parcel from some nameless person and put it in some other nameless person's bin, and that the latter person might not be aware of the plans of the former. "Nothing..." he said, weakly.

"Nothing! Good christ..." The woman reached out and took his skinny upper arm in a grip like a vice. "Tony! Mark! Get yer lazy arses out here!" She hauled Martin fully to his feet, then higher, and he dangled with his shoulder twisted uncomfortably as Tony and Mark slouched their chavvy way out of the house and over to where Martin and the unnamed woman stood. "Get in there! This fucking faggot just dumped somethin’...."

Neither Tony nor Mark seemed inclined to obey the instruction, giving a lot of "But Tina.."-like protests. When the instruction was repeated with more heat and considerably more profanity than before, they reluctantly tucked their gold chains into their track suit jackets, and scrambled up the sides of the skip.

"Look, I don't know what it is, I was paid to deliver... I'm a removals company. I mean, not a company, it's just me. I'm the company..." Martin trailed off as Tina again fixed him with the sort of stare that a cat gives to a cornered rodent, and he tried to breathe a little less loudly.

Some banging and thumping came through the thin metal walls of the skip. "It's Gazzer!" a voice shouted from inside. "He's been shot!"

Tina's face jerked around. "Bring him out." She turned back to Martin, again. "Whoever you are, you're in a pack of trouble."

* * *

Tony and Mark both had hands large enough to wrap fully around Martin's spindly arms, grasping them like vice-grips and holding him high enough that his feet barely touched the ground as they marched him towards the house. He tried to move his feet to make it feel like he was walking there voluntarily, but it was a pantomime that wasn't fooling anyone, least of all Martin.

The room they took him into was dark, and some rather worrisome scuttling sounds came from the vicinity of the floor. Martin was tossed forward onto what felt like a ratty, ripped-up mattress. What felt like a ratty, ripped-up pillow to his outstretched hand got up and scurried away, and was more likely to be a ratty, ripped-up rat.

"Tony. You stay here, and see what you can get outta 'im. Mark and me is going out to fetch... _her_." Tina and Mark turned and shuffled out of the doorway. Tony stood in front of Martin, his large form silhouetted in the weak light coming through the doorway. He balled his hands into fists, then raised them to punch each other; the shadowy effect would be rather nifty, really, if it weren't scaring the wee out of Martin.

"Gazzer were my _brother_ , you know." Tony stepped closer, his massive form blotting out the wan light.

"I'm sorry," Martin squeaked.

"We grew up together. Close, we were." Tony's massive arms reached out.

"I didn't know! I just... delivered... so sorry..."

Tony's hands met Martin's neck, and then the man's head fell onto Martin's shoulder. "I'm gonna miss him so much!" Tony wailed.

"I... I'm sorry..." Martin blinked, unsure what to do. Dampness started to seep through his jacket where the man's face rested. "Do you... do you have a brother?" Tony sniffled.

"Well." Martin swallowed. "Sort of."

* * *

"...and we would go huntin' fer squirrels sometimes..." Tony sniffled.

Martin squeezed Tony's shoulder. "He sounds like just a fantastic brother," he ventured. He hadn't said too much in the past fifteen minutes or so, letting Tony vent his sadness. He had been so concerned for his own safety that he hadn't really thought about - well, what had happened. He hadn't killed the man, no, but he had been _involved_ , and so he had some responsibility for Tony's sadness, didn't he? Should he - should he tell Tony about where he got the body? Make up for things, a bit? No, that seemed rather suicidal. He had get _out_ of here, then forget that any of this actually happened...

"He was!" Tony scrubbed at the back of his eyes with his hand. "He..." A door slammed, and Tony jumped to his feet, shoving Martin face-first onto the moldy-smelling mattress.

"Dija find anything out?" Tina's voice rang out.

"Nope, nothing yet," Tony replied, the sad quaver almost gone from his voice.

"Then step aside and let the professionals in," Tina announced.

The sound of high heels on wooden floors rang out as a third person walked into the room. Martin kept his face in the mattress. It seemed like the best course of action. He could hardly see anything in the dim room, anyway...

"Well, now. What have we here?" The voice did not match the surroundings. The accent was posh, the voice smooth and deep, and unmistakably female. Then, oddly, a sharp _snap_ , almost like the sound of... leather.

"He dumped Gazzer's body in the skip," Trina told the newcomer. "We wanna find out what he knows."

"I don't know anything!" Martin squeaked. "I'm a man with a van, I was told to take this package..."

That sharp _sound_ again, and Martin felt a stinging sensation across his buttocks. Even through his jeans, it burned. He yelped. "Give me ten minutes with him," that smooth, rich voice said, "and I'll tell you his mother's maiden name and his blood type."

"Just let us know who to go after for Gazzer," Tony grumbled. A messy clattering of shoes signaled the departure of those two from the room.

"Well, now," the rich voice purred, and the rhythmic clop of her high heels sounded again as she stepped closer. "Let's make this a little more _effective_." A long-fingered hand, with nails so sharp they gouged his skin, grasped the top of his trousers, yanking them downwards. A button popped off, and a chill fell across Martin's lower back and buttocks (cheap, thin underpants, hardly up to their task).

"Man... with a van," he protested, weakly. The quick movement of air was his only warning before that... whatever it was hit his buttocks again, a sharp sting that _burned_ like hot coals. Oddly enough, it was giving him an erection. That wasn't good, was it?

"Tell me more," she said, drawing that thing (riding crop?) across his lower back.

* * *

It must have been about twenty minutes later that she gave up. Martin had come in his underpants three times with a little whimper, but nobody was likely to notice on this ratty bed with so little light.

"What'd you get?" More clattering of feet, Tina's voice.

"He just keeps saying he's a man with a van," the posh voice grumbled. "He doesn't know anything. He described the fellow he took your friend Gary's body from. It sounds like Mack. Your 'friend' from the football matches."

"An' our 'friendly' bets. Right! Mark, get the car. We're paying him a visit."

"What are we doing with that bloke in there?" Tony asked. "Should I kill him?"

More clattering feet, into the room this time. A large shoe kicked Martin in the ribs. "Nah. He's not going to talk - he knows better, don't you?" Tina said.

"No! I mean, yes! I mean, I know better! That is... I don't know anything that happened tonight... nothing happened tonight! I was in bed all night!"

"Smart one, that fellow." Tina sounded satisfied.

* * *

The sky was starting to stain a sickly bluish as Martin parked his van back in front of his abode. Well, the abode that housed the attic he rented. Three students were still drinking out on the lawn. "Oi, it's the ghost again! Out haunting?"

Martin ignored them, making his way up to his attic room. The little sloped-roof cubby had never looked so beautiful, so _homey_. He shed his rat-chewed jacket, his trousers, and his come-stained underpants - making sure to fish out the money from his secret hiding place, between his testicles and arse. He sat on his futon, looking at the money.

_Three hundred pounds_. He was a lucky man.


End file.
